Blue canaries and lightswitches

[matgb]

Hmm, this might be of interest to more than a couple of you, 0ct0pus argues that "Birdhouse In Your Soul" by They Might Be Giants is a stupid person's idea of a clever song. Is he right?

Comments

[pickwick.livejournal.com]

Heh. It reads to me like someone throwing his toys out of the pram a bit because other people like something and he doesn't understand WHY!!1!

I don't have much music training, but it's catchy as hell, so I don't really care about how the chord progressions are all wrong or whatever he's moaning about :D And the lyrics are funny, but I haven't heard anyone claiming they're the smartest thing ever!

[liz-marcs.livejournal.com]

Well, that's just a case of missing the whole point, isn't it?

He doesn't like TMBG, which, fine. He doesn't like their music, okay, fine.

What has me shaking my head is that because he doesn't like it, it follows that TMBG are the total suck.

I like TMBG. I have friends who are fans of TMBG. But I'm pretty sure that none of us think that their music is particularly deep, nor are any of us about to say they are the Best Band Evar! Everyone I know likes them because they're fun and not all that pretentious. They have fun, the fans have fun, the end.

Which is...'Birdhouse in Your Soul.' It's just fun. Not everyone's cup of tea, but bouncy fun. God knows we need more of that in music.

Then again, he took a side-swipe at Red Dwarf, so it could be he just lacks a sense of fun. *rolls eyes with amusement*

[susanne-est-moi.livejournal.com]

Well...I personally hate TMBG, but they're my little brother's favorite band.

I also love the Backstreet Boys more than just about any other band in existence, so I see myself as being in no position to judge the musical preferences of others.

[tinuvielberen.livejournal.com]

Pfft!

I like "Birdhouse in Your Soul" because the lyrics are fast and fun to sing. I'm a fan of the G&S patter song, and this one is a close approximation. I like the tune, especially the "who watches over you" bit. And it's all a bit nonsensical and surreal. It's a song that puts a silly smile on my face, so what's not to love?

[0ct0pus.livejournal.com]

Hiya Matt, cheers for this (...)

Anyway, that day did catch me in a bit of a troll-y mood, and this song seemed to have caught the brunt of it.

Just to clarify to the respondents you have so far - it's OK to have strong opinions about music, really it is. I know we all go on about cultural relativism and suchlike but that makes for very dull blog posts. And what fun would that be?

Oh, and I don't think people who like this song (and/or band) are necessarily stupid.

Finally, was that someone down there sticking up for Red Dwarf? The whole of Red Dwarf, rather than just the first two or three series?

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

I'm replying to you here rather than in your own journal because here's where I saw this...

I can see your objections to Birdhouse In Your Soul - the song put me off the band for *years* because it's really not very good. All your criticisms are true. BUT - it's the most insanely catchy piece of music I've ever heard. I had the line 'not to put too fine a point on it/Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet' going round, in a loop, in my head, for eighteen months...

But as for TMBG being a 'stupid person's idea of a clever band', that's true, sort of, but is equally true for Waits and Costello (both of whom I love, but come on - your description applies perfectly to them), and much more true for Tori 'I've read a Neil Gaiman book and heard a Kate Bush album' Amos.

It's true that TMBG are much favoured by a particular kind of rather smug American middle-class student types, but they've actually done a few rather excellent tracks. Older is a great song, as is World Before Later On, and their children's album No is possibly the best music I've ever heard aimed at pre-teens. They also have excellent taste in cover versions.

[0ct0pus.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this - will check out a couple of the tracks you mention. Over here in the UK "birdhouse" is the entire of TMBG so I guess (like yourself) that the song had put me off investigating the rest of the bands work.

Tori made the list simply because she is an amazing piano player and I can listen to amazing piano players all day. To be honest I prefer it when she sings other peoples songs but a lot of people disagree and I can kind of understand where they are coming from.

And - yes - agree on Waits and Costello, though there is something to engage with there.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, Waits and Costello are both superb songwriters, two of my favourites, but they do both think they're cleverer than they are ;) (see also: Frank Zappa, Randy Newman, REM).

I totally dismissed They Might Be Giants until I started dating an American, and there's still something about them I find offputting - they're not a band I *want* to like - but at the same time they've done some really excellent stuff. At their best they're something like a cross between REM and Flanders & Swann, with a little XTC thrown in, but at their worst the whimsy and 'whackiness' overwhelms everything, and they become almost Weird Al Yankovic (right down to the accordion playing).

The best thing to check out is probably the compilation Dial-A-Song or the children's album No! - all their albums are patchy, but they all have a few great moments...

[paulatpingu.livejournal.com]

Bought the album with this on, listened to it once, watched it slowly descend to the bottom of the CD pile, never to be listened to again.

Total arse and a complete waste of my money, so yeah, utterly over-rated.

Still, YMMV - I know loads of TMBG fans, and I wouldn't call them all stupid pseudo-intellectuals who can't tell a good song from a lame one.

[thapunkprincess.livejournal.com]

I'm no fan of the band, but that critique is crap: "...bunch of home keyboard sounds sloppily programmed together with some bored sounding American guy half-singing over the top..." Yeah well that sounds like Suicide or any number of great no/new-wave bands. What is this, the 1980s? If you want stupid people's ideas of clever bands, try Radiohead.